Dust Devil

by Bonds, Parris Afton

  "Nevertheless,” she pressed, "a poorly timed bluff could cost you more than your markers.”

  "You’ve played cards before,” he accused and found himself somewhat pleased at the scandalous idea.

  She shook her head. "Mah-Jongg. I learned to play it in India. ’Tis a simple game played with bamboo tiles, but the scoring system is complicated. A marker like Cambria would not be overlooked in Mah-Jongg.”

  He tossed out the dregs of his coffee cup. "I’ve risked me life many times over the years for every vara of that land grant. Tis something I dinna take lightly. Just as a wife I dinna take lightly.”

  Embarrassed by his intensity, she concentrated on her dinner, but too soon it was finished and he was banking the dancing flames. The fire’s light illuminated the vigor and power in his face, which the beard could not hide. She found it difficult to believe that he was more than twenty-five years older than she. He seemed closer to thirty than forty.

  As Stephen made the bedroll, his freckled hands moving as deftly as a cardsharp’s, she trembled with the knowledge of what was to come. Asian girls were taught early in life the duties of pleasing a man. But so soon! cried out something inside her. Not two years before she had had her first menses, discovered with a mixture of guilt and pleasure the sudden burgeoning of her breasts.

  He turned toward her. His black eyes met hers across the flickering embers, and she thought how those eyes smoldered just as hotly as the fire’s coals. "You are little more than a child, sixteen, yes.”

  It wasn’t a question but a statement. The way he said it, the words weren’t disparaging. No, almost, breathless. His next utterance was forceful. “Rosemary.”

  There could be no further delay. Payment for Cambria was due. Rosemary raised her arms in a genuine gesture of warm welcome.

  * * * * *

  The Navajo sat astride the chestnut stallion, his knees hooked under the lariat tied loosely about the animal’s barrel. The small ears of the Arab horse pricked forward as they picked up the sound of what the Navajo had been watching for the past quarter of an hour.

  From the view of the bare sandstone butte, Lario followed the progress of the lone wagon across the lush gamma grass that carpeted the Pecos Valley below. The man in the wagon represented the end to the way of life of the Indian’s people, the Dine’e. The others — the small ranchers, the prospectors, even the soldiers, most of whom would return to their families in the States when their time was up — represented no permanent threat.

  But it was Rhodes, and his hunger for power, that would bring about the end to the Navajo and their Athabascan brothers. Yet the Dine’e could not see that, Lario reflected, and a line of bitterness stretched flat his lips. Slowly the Dine’e were being emasculated . . . reduced to eating Rhodes’s gifts of beef and mutton and begging whiskey.

  "A man with nothing to do is no man at all,” the Mormon missionary had once told him. But in his zeal to educate the dirty, ragged Indian boy the missionary had neglected phrases like Manifest Destiny. Yet it had not taken the boy long to recognize the slow erosion of his people and their land, to realize that the Thing That Steals the Land, the surveyor’s compass, was as fatal as the fiery blast of the Long Arm.

  At one time Lario had believed that the white man’s knowledge he had acquired could help his people. Now he was no longer so sure. The Athabascans had been raised on hardship and danger. "The best light cavalry there is,” Kit Carson often said. "They can shoot from the back of a galloping horse like Tartars.” Indeed, the Athabascans were descendants of the Tartars.

  Now the Dine’e were reeling under the blows of the ever-encroaching civilization, and Lario wondered if there was a way to save The People, if there was an answer to the dilemma. His brain burned with the continually nagging question. He felt so inadequate.

  It would be so easy, he had often thought, to take his short buffalo bow or his skinning knife and end Rhodes’s life. But it would not stop the influx of men just as greedy. No, better to have patience. Let the Anglos fight among themselves for the power. Then . . .

  And the woman in the wagon? His eyes narrowed, seeing again the hair the shade of the fall leaves. Burnt red, like a ceremonial campfire sometimes, sometimes pale orange when the sun’s light fell just so. He heard again her Anglo’s stiff tongue trying to pronounce acequia, the Spanish word for ditch, and a faint smile touched his lips. He thought of the fine bones of her face, whose expression was at times scornful and at other times wary, and he thought of the slender body and the lithe way she moved it.

  Rhodes could not see that in a few years the woman’s angularities would smooth into flowing lines, like the life-giving streams. The woman would not ease into the dimpled fat of the Mexican women who had enjoyed too many siestas, or into the stocky solidarity of the Indian women who had known only coarse work and exposure to the harsh winters and fiery summers.

  And why did this Rosemary Gallagher not see that she was being used, as Rhodes used everyone? But then she was still young — what, fifteen or sixteen to his own thirty-one summers?

  Impatience finally overtook him, and his knees pressed against his horse’s sides. There was not space in his thoughts for a woman. Especially an Anglo.

  CHAPTER 6

  Rosemary knew now. And wondered that so much had been made of the wedding night. Within that first month she had grown accustomed to Stephen’s nightly visits. They were punctual and precise. Even to his leave-taking immediately afterward. And his lovemaking was neither as abhorrent as the gossipy matrons of Waterford, Ireland, had made it out to be nor as romantic as the Bronte sisters had depicted it in their books.

  What did surprise her was how easily she slipped back into the feudal way of life she had known in the Orient. Cambria operated on much the same scale, with Stephen the lord of his fief. And as in the Orient, there were servants, mostly Mexican and Indian children, who performed the most menial tasks, from brushing out her unruly waist-length hair each night to emptying the chamber pots each morning.

  She had fallen in love with Cambria that first day she passed onto its land . . . the steep escarpments, purple peaks, and low rolling valleys that suddenly gave way to red deserts. Cambria was vibrant colors and varied landscape.

  But it was the Castle with its heavy earthen walls stenciled by pink hollyhock and wild, golden roses de castilla, and its spiraling turrets, dormer windows, and the wide balustraded verandas that would bind her heart to Cambria.

  She had first seen the house, which, with its seventy-three rooms, was indeed large enough to be called a castle, when Stephen had brought the wagon around a jutting wall of rock and halted there on the pine-crested bluff. Set under the Pecos escarpment, the Castle topped a low knoll at the center of a horseshoe bend of the Pecos River. Clustering about it were the corrals, stables, and other outbuildings for the employees. At the knoll’s bottom reposed Cambria’s village—several structures, mostly of adobe, that bordered a road paralleling the river’s bend.

  Anyone seeing the Castle was at once impressed by the magnificence of the man-made creation in a land dominated by the magnificence of nature. Cambria’s Castle ruled over everything around it. And about it there was an aura of warmth and security that she had never known.

  "Twenty years ago I started with a one-room log cabin,” Stephen said proudly. "I’ve tried to make it as much like a European chateau as possible.”

  The interior was equally impressive with calico-papered walls, massive tables topped with white marble, and Brussels carpets — all brought in by wagon over the Santa Fe Trail. Crimson velvet draperies veiled mica windowpanes. "I plan to have glass panes brought in on the next wagons out of Independence,” he had told her as he had led her through the enormous house. "As you can see, it takes a leprechaun’s pot of gold to keep Cambria operating, and there still be much to do.”

  An elegant staircase of polished mahogany dominated the main room. Her fingers trailed along the smooth, cool balustrade, touching its curves . . . just as
her fingers lovingly touched everything they came in contact with. It was her house. To the rear of the house was the large kitchen which on some nights served enough food for sixty guests, though five to ten was more the usual number each night.

  Also to the rear of the house was a set of rooms expressly for the men. Within the first month she violated the taboo and marched past Stephen’s bedroom suite and into the great office. Both she and he faced each other alone, stunned — Stephen, that she had entered the male sanctuary, and she, by her surroundings. The huge room was adorned with stuffed birds, elk and deer heads, several bear rugs, and a white buffalo rug. In one corner stood a round, green, baize-covered table reserved for his nightly card games.

  Somewhat dazed, she took a seat opposite the massive desk on the camelback horsehide-upholstered sofa. Calmly she folded her hands in her lap while he puffed agitatedly on a Dundee pipe. "Well?” he asked at last.

  "Stephen, I’ve tried to occupy myself with the running of the Castle. But with its wealth of servants . . .” She shrugged. There was not enough to fill her days. Nor was knitting and needlepoint in the sitting room off her bedroom enough to fill her evenings. She sorely missed, more than she had supposed, the company of other women.

  He tapped the pipe’s clay bowl against the palm of his hand. "And?”

  "The children here—both the girls and boys should be educated. I’d like to set up a schoolroom in the adobe chapel. I know the outer walls are crumbling to dust, but the chapel itself is still serviceable.”

  To her surprise he agreed. "Just as long as the schooling doesn’t interfere with the children’s jobs.” Then he leaned forward, and a reluctant smile formed beneath the dark red mustache. "I couldn’t be happier with me choice of women. It’s a wife I wanted who would be bringing the touches of civilization to Cambria.” He paused. “I wasn’t expecting much. Beauty isn’t important. You’re all eyes, still, you’ve quite fulfilled what I sought for a wife—a gentle, well-bred, and intelligent young Anglo woman.

  * * * * *

  Armed with books that had been shipped months before with her trunks of clothes, Rosemary began visiting the village, talking with the Mexican women as they baked bread in their outdoor beehive ovens or washed clothing in cauldrons of boiling lye soap. In poorly accented Spanish mixed with Italian and an intermittent Hindustani phrase, she cajoled the mothers to let their children attend the school held each afternoon during the siesta.

  Consuela, the Castle’s old cook, began to volunteer gossip—the names of the ill, the newborns, the homes where death had recently struck, and Rosemary would tuck sticks of peppermint candy or a gift for a newborn in her basket along with her books.

  After the school hour she always made a point of visiting with old Miguel, who ran the one store in the village. His grandson, six-year-old Pedro, was in her class, and she tried to teach the child and his grandfather how to play Mah-Jongg but had to settle for dominoes.

  Inevitably, she ran into Lario. She had left the store, after losing a game of dominoes to Miguel, and had meant to inspect the livery stable at the rear of the store. She did not recognize until it was too late the bare-chested man working over the forge’s fiery heat. The copper skin gleamed with a sheen of perspiration, and despite the deceptive leanness, the corded muscles in his arms and shoulders and, yes, even his waist, rippled with each movement. Not at all like the white-bellied Stephen. At one wrist was a leather band for protection from the slap of the bowstring and about his upper left arm was a band of hand worked silver.

  The ringing of his hammer against the anvil had masked her approach. Her heart thudding, she carefully began to edge her way back outside. But, as if warned by some primitive sense, Lario looked around. "You wanted something, Senora?”

  It was a polite enough question, but something about the way he emphasized the title irritated her, momentarily drowning out her fear of him. "I — I was looking for a suitable riding horse.” How inane! She wanted to bite her tongue.

  Lario’s heavy-lidded gaze took in her gray cotton shirtwaist dress, and she flushed. "For later, of course.”

  "Of course,” he said and went back to hammering on the white metal.

  Forgetting her fear, she moved nearer to better view the exquisite piece of craftsmanship. "How beautiful!” she marveled, admiring the intricate design of silver and turquoise. The work of the silver band was strong and true and untouched by foreign influence.

  A brief smile of pleasure passed over his face. "A gift for the Senora.” He held the bracelet out to her, his deep- set eyes watching her inquiringly.

  "No! No, thank you,” she gasped, trying to keep her returning paranoia under control, but Lario’s detached gaze seemed as hot to her as the flame leaping from the forge. She murmured something polite — what she did not know — and stumbled from the stable. Outside, she leaned weakly against the stable’s weathered frame and drew in deep, labored breaths. In her ears her blood pounded in tempo with that of Lario’s hammer at the forge.

  "I heard you’ve been playing dominoes with old Miguel,” Stephen said that evening as he led her into dinner.

  She cast a curious glance at her husband but only said, "Aye, I’ve been thinking about turning the store into a trading post.”

  Stephen’s bushy red brows jerked upward. "A trading post? What’s wrong with the store?”

  "’Tis fine for tobacco and coffee and ammunition,” she said and hurried on to tell him about the project that had been in the back of her mind for some time. "But what about things like hairpins and materials... and books?”

  He halted before the dining room’s double doors and took her hands. "I understand what you be saying. But these people have no money. To be sure, Miguel knows' how to appraise what the people do bring in for trade, but ’tis nothing he knows about keeping a ledger, about debits and credits.”

  She held her ground. "But I do.”

  He sighed. "Come to me office tomorrow morning.”

  Victorious, she was exceedingly charming that evening to the array of trappers and traders and casual travelers who happened to traverse the kingdom, and they were enchanted by their first sight in a long time of a white woman.

  Though Stephen still frowned on Rosemary’s interest in the business that took place in the forbidden office in the rear of the Castle, she learned little by little, through the keeping of the trading post’s ledger, about other facets of the Cambria empire. "These be things that you wouldn’t understand,” he would explain when she asked.

  She was persistent. "That little man that was here yesterday—why doesn’t he go directly to the forts to sell his sheep? Why come to you?”

  "Because,” he reluctantly told her, "our Santa Fe Trading Post enjoys a near monopoly in supplying the government with beef and mutton and flour for our military posts.”

  "But that’s unfair!”

  He laughed out loud and gathered her to him. "Where be your loyalty, wife?”

  But the next morning he took pains to explain things more fully. "The ranchers in the lower Pecos Valley depend upon me to buy their sheep and cattle since they dinna have the knowledge or men available to get them to Las Cruces and Demming. In turn I see to it their ranches are protected from the Indians and cattle rustlers that be drifting up from Texas.”

  She watched as Stephen patted the tousled dark curls of the servant girl, Isabel, when she returned the filled coffee cup to him and felt a moment’s pride that he was so good with the children employed at the Castle. He would make a good father, she reflected, and wondered if she was yet with child.

  Stephen tossed down the coffee and rose. "By the way, Shackelford—the banker you met at our wedding — he’ll be coming for a few days’ stay. You might be wanting to give him a room on the lower floor. He has lumbago, I understand.”

  She opened her mouth, and Stephen laid his blunt finger across her lips. "Before you be asking me why again,” he said, "I’ll tell you this time — only because you look so fetching this morning
with your hair down.”

  She smiled, glad now that she had stopped wearing her nightcap, for it was simply too hot some nights.

  "Shackelford wants to discuss filling the vacancy created when Jesus Moreno died — he was the county’s last probate judge.”

  Her fingers flew to her lips. "Wasn’t the poor man at our dinner table several weeks ago?”

  "The same. Unfortunately, it seems he took eight or nine dollars from a cowpuncher in a game of monte, and the cow puncher dinna like it.”

  "Nine dollars hardly seems justification for murdering a man, Stephen!”

  "Exactly, as I’ve been trying to tell you, me dear — you don’t understand the West. I much prefer to see you in our bedroom instead of me office.”

  Though Stephen might complain of her interest in Cambria’s business affairs, she was determined he would find no reason for complaint in her bed.

  On the nights that he did not host a card game she would spend longer than necessary at her bath. Then she would slip into the four-poster with its velvet hangings and await his arrival. Some nights, especially Saturdays, she could hear from the village below the gay fiddle music of the bailes — the dances held in the store’s large room. And, being sixteen, she could only wish she were at the baile, any place but there waiting for Stephen.

  She truly liked and admired her husband and chastised herself time after time for such disloyal thoughts. So when he came to her, clad in a robe that did not conceal that he was in the prime of life, she was most compliant as he instructed her, "Lift your legs, like so,” or "Slower now.”

  Later, after he had left, she would wonder why she should be so dissatisfied, so tense during his visits. He treated her with great courtesy and even affection. He was a husband to be proud of. He had given her a home worthy of a princess.

  It was merely the normal letdown after months of anticipation. Bridal blues the matrons called it.

  Of all people, she told herself, she should be the last to succumb to romantic illusions. Still . . . .